The Companies Act of 2011 enshrines in law the right of women to serve as directors of companies. According to the law, women are allowed to establish companies on their own, and the law removes the onus on women of securing spousal consent through Section 5(2), which establishes that “anything contained in the customary or common law” that prevents a married person from acting as promoter of a company “without his or her spouse’s consent” be disregarded and overridden.
The applicant was a woman married according to Muslim rites and whose husband had died intestate. The marriage was not solemnized by a marriage officer under the Marriage Act 25 of 1961. The house in which the applicant and her husband had lived was transferred to the deceased’s estate. The applicant was told that she could not inherit from the estate of the deceased because she had been married according to Muslim rites, and therefore was not a “surviving spouse.” A claim for maintenance against the estate was rejected on the same basis.
The applicant was a woman married according to Hindu rites. Accordingly, when her husband died intestate, his parents stood to inherit his estate. The applicant sought a declaratory judgment that the word “spouse” as used in the Intestate Succession Act 81 of 1987 includes a surviving partner to a monogamous Hindu marriage. The Court granted the declaratory judgment and held that the applicant was entitled to inherit from her deceased husband.
The applicant was in a polygamous Muslim marriage. After her husband died intestate, the respondent, the executor of the deceased’s estate, refused the applicant’s claims on the basis that polygynous Muslim marriages were not legally recognised under the Intestate Succession Act. The court held that precluding the applicant from an inheritance unfairly discriminated on the grounds of religion, marital status, and gender, and was therefore inconsistent with section 9 of the Constitution.
The sons of Lerionka Ole Ntutu filed to prevent Ntutu’s married daughters from receiving their inheritance of his estate Section 82(4) (b) of the Kenyan Constitution. Under Kikuyu customary law, only unmarried daughters were allowed an inheritance. The presiding judge held that this claim was illegitimate, stating that the law cannot deprive a person of their rights only on the basis of sex and marital status. The judge followed the precedent set by the ruling in Rono v.
In McBain v State of Victoria (2000) 99 FCR 116, Dr. John McBain, a Melbourne fertility specialist, was approached by Ms. Lisa Meldrum, a single woman seeking in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) using donor sperm. Dr. McBain advised her that the Infertility Treatment Act 1995 (Vic) prohibited him from providing IVF to unmarried women.
The deceased was married to the second and third applicant under Islamic law. The marriage of the deceased and the third applicant was entered into before the marriage between the deceased and the second applicant. However, the deceased and the second applicant entered into a civil marriage to qualify for a home loan. Following the death of the deceased, The Registrar of Deeds, Cape Town, refused to register the title deed to the family home in the name of the third applicant.
The Sex Discrimination Ordinance (“SDO”) prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex, pregnancy, and marital status. Both direct and indirect discrimination are prohibited. Direct discrimination occurs where a party treats a person “less favorably” than another person in similar circumstances, except for the attribute of sex/pregnancy/marital status. Courts use a “but for test,” asking whether the complainant would not have received the less favorable treatment but for his/her sex/pregnancy/marital status.
The plaintiff was an employee of the defendant along with her husband, who was her direct supervisor. The defendant fired the plaintiff’s husband. Subsequently, the defendant informed the plaintiff that because of her marital relationship with her husband, she would have to be fired too, despite the lack of any wrongdoing on her part. The defendant moved to dismiss the claim, but the Court refused to, finding that there were credible allegations of violations of the Family Status Discrimination Ordinance and the Sex Discrimination Ordinance.
In this appeal, a child born to unmarried parents appealed the High Court’s finding that a relevant part of the proviso to Article 900.4 of the Japanese Civil Code was not inconsistent with Article 14.1 of the Constitution of Japan, prohibiting discrimination based on race, belief, sex, social status, or lineage. The proviso set forth that the statutory share in inheritance of a child born out of wedlock is half of that of a child in wedlock.
